Modern telecommunications systems include heterogeneous mixtures of second, third, and fourth generation (2G, 3G, and 4G) cellular-wireless access technologies, which can be cross-compatible and can operate collectively to provide data communication services. Global Systems for Mobile (GSM) is an example of 2G telecommunications technologies; Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is an example of 3G telecommunications technologies; and Long Term Evolution (LTE), including LTE Advanced, and Evolved High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA+) are examples of 4G telecommunications technologies. As increased capabilities of user equipment (UE) enable greater data consumption, placing increased demands on networks, new networks with higher capabilities have been developed. The 5G telecommunications technologies are the next generation mobile networks that are designed to combine both an evolution and revolution of the existing LTE/LTE-A mobile networks to provide a much higher connectivity, greater throughput, much lower latency, and ultra-high reliability to support new use cases and applications.
To accommodate the growth in subscribers and the increased demand for access and use of the networks, network expansion and builds, such as deployment of spectrum, cell site additions, and other solutions or tactics, are necessary to provide good user experience to customers or to meet the given payload or tonnage, i.e., GBs, with a given network quality level. Current congestion, achievable payload, and user throughput may be used to determine the performance of the existing network as a baseline. The requirements for an existing network, a potential partnership with a service provider having additional networks, and new products and services may change in network growth trajectory, and may necessitate a new determination in the network requirement.
The existing network, designed and built to meet particular requirements and demands at the time of the design, such as the cellular access technologies (2G, 3G, or 4G), capacity, cell site location, a number of network sectors, spectral efficiency schemes, etc., is likely different from other networks that are currently in operation. Because of the differences, available solutions for a given network to meet the new requirements may be different, or unique, compared to other networks, and common builds are not likely to be sufficient or possible. Therefore, specific build options need to be determined.